


diagram of an alembic still

by otheril



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Blow Jobs, Externalized homophobia, Frottage, Internalized Homophobia, Jealousy, Love Triangles, M/M, Pining, Sexual Repression, Simmering Resentment, Slow Burn, Unresolved Sexual Tension, heartbreaking: two of the most obnoxious people you know are circling each other like alley cats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 18:53:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25820137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/otheril/pseuds/otheril
Summary: Sopping blood on himself, scoffing through a pinched nose, what had he said?Trouble—*Lambert thinks Geralt is fucking the bard. Jaskier thinks Geralt is fucking his old friend. They’re both wrong.
Relationships: (also one-sided), (one-sided), Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Lambert, Jaskier | Dandelion/Lambert
Comments: 60
Kudos: 236





	diagram of an alembic still

He brought the little sycophant to Kaer Morhen.

Lambert only knew him by reputation, as the little fop trailing Geralt a near decade, singing about his embarrassing romantic indiscretions.

Hard to like. Harder to respect. Worse in person. He saw him in the courtyard.

Jaskier—he knew that much, at least—flit through the grounds, leaving horse and pack behind. He ran easily, craning his head to take in the castle. Lambert wondered, not for the first time, what the fuck anyone had to smile about in Kaer Morhen.

Geralt stalked in behind the fop, leading the horses in, watching him gape. In one piece, Lambert noted. He looked unbent, hale for the struggle up the mountain. Thick-limbed and damnably healthy despite three seasons on the road. His silver hair had grown long. He looked windblown.

His eyes were tired, but he watched the bard with the faintest look of amusement.

Geralt led the horses in with one ungloved hand, fingers reddened in the cold. He squeezed the reins, veins bulging in his forearm.

And then the bard called to him.

“Hail, and well met!” he called, _smiling_ , “I have the pleasure of being—“

“Geralt’s bard,” Lambert said, turning to Geralt, “Man, you look like shit.”

Geralt snorted.

He climbed the steps, and clapped Lambert’s forearm roughly with his ungloved hand, icy fingers pressing into him, then gone. Lambert’s fingers released Geralt’s arm a second later, clumsy in the winter air, in the glove. He drew his hand back, shaking the tension out.

Up close, his cheeks were blushed and chapped with cold.

“They put us through the trials, for what? Nine months of ploughing noblewomen, you look half-dead.”

“Don’t lose any hair over it.” His eyes crinkled. Looking at another witcher’s eyes made him feel—

“—Jaskier,” said Jaskier, primly, “—is who I am.”

Geralt looked slightly abashed, inclining his head to the man, “Jaskier. Lambert.”

He was slight, and soft. He had the smooth, unlined skin of a noble’s son. He wore maroon under his furs. The way he puffed up at his name reminded Lambert irrepressibly of a toy soldier.

_If he’s waiting for a bow, he’ll be waiting the rest of his fucking life._

“Couldn’t go one season without hearing your _exploits_ sung? Think you’d forget your own name?”

“Thought a new face would do you some good, Lambert,” Geralt said, flicking burrs from Lambert’s shoulder carelessly.

Lambert bristled, swatting his hand away.

The bard picked his way up the steps, passing Geralt. His round face reminded Lambert of a shitty little angel in a fresco, or something, and his smile was stubbornly, pigheadedly conciliatory. His eyes were fairly leering.

“Earning Geralt’s trust, his friendship, his _esteem_ has been one of the more rewarding experiences of my life.”

Geralt mumbled indistinctly, and made his way to the entrance hall.

“It humbles me to be counted among his intimates,” Jaskier breathed, canines glinting in the dying light. His pale eyes shone, pinning him in place. Lashes like a girl.

“—It’s so good to finally meet _you_.”

The bard breezed past, leaving Lambert alone with the horses. 

*

Jaskier didn’t know why he did it. He didn’t know why he was still doing it. It was well and truly, out of his control.

But the way that man had _looked_ at Geralt. In the courtyard, looming down from the stair like some gargoyle. He bore _holes_ into him. He looked—

He was still looking. Lambert followed his brothers’ conversation, but his eyes remained hopelessly, _obviously_ fixed on Geralt. He would periodically sit up straight, as if with conscious effort, and set to noncommittally picking his nails. He pushed a neep around his plate. He bent towards Geralt like a reed.

He looked starved. He looked _obvious_.

If he did, none of the other men seemed to notice. Geralt seemed at ease in a way he rarely did when packed in a gloom corner of an inn. Around his brothers, the tension bled from his shoulders.

It’s easy to be happy for a dear friend. It’s easy to see a dear friend happy.

_Did he fuck Lambert?_

Listening to the witchers, it became clear to Jaskier that Lambert simply spoke to everyone _like that_. He was churlish, and rude. He antagonized Vesemir, and needled poor, sweet Eskel. He spoke abominably. He was nearly funny. He spoke to amuse himself.

 _Is he handsome?_ He had a look to him, an _air_. Hawkish nose, full mouth, widow’s peak. His scars made him look disreputable. His eyes made him look like Geralt.

Jaskier choked on his drink.

He had been served the same spirit as the rest, heavily diluted in water to account for ‘human frailty’, as Vesemir had put it, not unkindly. It could strip paint.

Lambert had brewed it, personally, and with some pride.

What business was it of his, who Geralt fucked?

*

It’s none of Lambert’s business, where Geralt sticks his cock, but to bring him to _Kaer Morhen_ —

And now they set him to caterwauling, most nights. Eskel, beating heart of a fucking lover, set him to caterwauling ballads. Not that the bard had needed much encouragement, leaping out of his seat like his breeches were on fire. Vesemir was of no help. He had _requests_.

Lambert shifted on the hard bench. The hearthsfire made the hall dully overwhelming in his leathers. A bead of sweat trickled down his neck. Felt like the legs of an insect. His fingers twitched against the table.

Eskel leaned in, rumbling low, “Wouldn’t kill you to smile. Poor boy’s working for his supper up there.”

Lambert audibly scoffed. Eskel cuffed him on the head.

“Brute.”

The witchers had spent the better part of a week repairing the walls of the castle. Backbreaking work that should, by all rights, have left him too stone-tired to argue.

Jaskier brought them water, during the day. Held a little earthen jug, scurried around like a tavern wench. Smiled at his brothers. The bard had held his eye while he filled his cup, _smiled_ at nothing.

He stole a glance at Geralt, watching the bard play, body listing to the side, resting his jaw in his hand. A streak of dried plaster flaked away on his neck. The filth of the day made his skin luminous in the lamplight. Is this what he looks like, when he plays for him?

*

It was in his repertoire. There was no malice to it, no antagonism, nothing of the sort. It’s in his repertoire, a roadside favorite, and he had simply thought his hosts would like to hear it.

When he plays “Her Sweet Kiss”, it’s only ever to please Geralt—who _is_ pleased, despite his grumbling. And to _feed_ Geralt, most critically. And maybe, fractionally, to torture himself.

It wasn’t a terribly long song. Pretty, as they go. He had gotten good at watching for Geralt in a crowd, glancing almost carelessly. So few faces in the hall now, he allowed himself a little stare.

Geralt was the picture of forbearance, but he could see the slight twitch of his lips under his beard. His eyes were downcast in shadow, fingers picking at a fleck of rust on his mail, and then he looked at Jaskier. He had the warm, long-suffering look of a man who was resolved to endure his ribbing.

Lambert tore his bread to atoms.

*

His room was in the high corner of the castle, furthest from the main hall. It had always been, when Kaer Morhen was full of witchers, and children. Never felt the need to move to a different room, even though Stefan’s was larger, Aubry’s close enough to the kitchen that one stone wall always stayed warm. It felt like conceding something. Lambert didn’t know what.

His quarters were high enough to be arid and chilly always. Sometimes he got nosebleeds, had to walk down, nose skyward, gingerly stepping down the spiral tower stair. There are a million ways to die a witcher, even, _especially_ , in the castle. Lambert hoped he wouldn’t be the first to eat shit walking down the stairs.

It was past midnight. Lambert navigated the staircase with every ounce of cunning he had, came out unquestionably on top. He walked further through the main hall to the alchemical stores, head raised, pinching his nose in his fingers. There’s nothing that Swallow can’t fix. He resisted the impulse to list what Swallow can’t fix.

“Are you well?”

Lambert’s hip slammed hard into a credenza.

“I say,” Jaskier said, yawning, “Are you well? Are you bleeding?”

“Yes,” Lambert snipped, thickly.

Jaskier was hunched over the table where he last saw him hours ago. Under the smell of Lambert’s own blood, the air was pickled. Jaskier raised his head deliberately, looking… off. Always was bold with his stares, but there was something frankly defiant in his eyes. He wiggled a finger in the open jar of spirit before him.

“Hope you don’t mind,” Jaskier said, a dare creeping into his voice.

“Fucking gross, don’t put your grubby little fingers in there.”

“Truly, truly sorry.”

“Trouble in paradise, little man?”

Jaskier stuck the finger into his mouth, cleaned the liquor off with a pop, and shuddered. Lambert snatched back the jar.

“I’ve no trouble,” Jaskier said, eyes bright, “I’m not bleeding from the face.”

Lambert stomped through the hall to the stores. He could barely see in the pitch black of the alcove, but knew the stock without sight, jamming a few phials of swallow into his pocket. Shelves felt emptier than they used to, the remaining celandine petals were crumbling and silty with age. He and Eskel could see to it before the first snows.

He walked out again through the main hall, nose high again, resolving not to look.

“Y’make it yourself,” Jaskier said, voice muffled.

Lambert froze, stared hard at the ceiling beams, willed himself to let one thing go.

“Yes,” he said.

*

Jaskier woke late, transcendently green and ruing the day he was born, Lambert was born, Geralt was born. Eskel stood in the doorway just to _laugh_ , and came perilously near a ruing himself, but for how handsomely his scars furrowed and split his cheek.

His head ached. He had nothing but time to think about it.

Jaskier pulled the roughspun blanket up past his ears. Geralt’s rooms were silent next door, he and the rest were long awake, _contributing_. They might finish the eastern wall today. Jaskier tried to contribute. When he rises, he’ll bring the witchers water and victuals, and sweep the threshold, and scour cauldrons like a hive of virgin priestesses, but—

now that he thought of it, Geralt’s quarters had been silent for a fortnight.

What was it that man had said? Jaskier groaned as his vision filled with solid grey smoke, the beginnings of a truly awful headache.

Sopping blood on himself, scoffing through a pinched nose, what had he said?

 _Trouble_ —

*

Grown men can pick flowers on the mountain. Wasn’t anything different than gathering herbs alone on the Path. Only now there’s three of them, together on the mountain, and when Lambert looks over the reeds to find Eskel, the other man is gently twisting the buds from the stalk, face serene. Wasn’t a thing.

“You’re pulling too much off,” Eskel murmured. He had a bloom in his mitt, like he was holding a baby bird. Lambert must’ve seen him hold a baby bird once, the thought came to mind too easily.

Lambert looked at the basket at his hip, rife with stems.

“Worry about yourself,” he said.

Geralt huffed, crouched further afield with his own basket. Back turned, Lambert could only see the set of his shoulders above the tall grasses. Geralt raised an arm in the air, holding a small white flower like a flare.

“Bryonia.”

“Arenaria,” Lambert and Eskel said.

Geralt cursed under his breath, turning to face them, “The petals—“

“Bryonia; long petals, short stamen. Arenara; other way around,” Eskel said.

“Very common mistake,” Lambert grinned.

Geralt shot him a look. He pocketed the flower carefully.

“Haven’t done this in a while,” he admitted.

Lambert walked uphill, towards an outcrop of stone with pea-sized red petals buried in the moss.

“No kidding. If sorceresses and woods witches threw herbs at _my_ feet wherever I went—”

“Stench like yours, they just might.”

“That’s what hard work smells like, old man.”

“Hm.”

Geralt rolled his eyes, and rose. He laced his hands behind his neck and leaned back in a stretch, the arthritic fucker. The midday sun made Geralt’s hair cling to his forehead and neck in strands, despite the chill. His breath fogged.

Lambert hadn’t been out on the mountain with Geralt, or Eskel, or anyone, since he was a kid. Even that had been rare, the witchers had usually sent their wards to forage alone. He could hear Eskel humming a ways back. It was nice.

He nitpicked the red flowers out of the stone. So what? It’s nice.

He felt Geralt’s shadow on his back, before he heard him. He padded up behind Lambert, clearing his throat belatedly. Geralt’s face was deliberately unreadable, but he held the woven basket half-out, awkwardly, like he still had time to change his mind.

Lambert raised his brows. Geralt sighed, shoving it to Lambert’s chest.

“Anything you can use?” he said.

Lambert looked in the basket. Geralt had filled it to the brim, pretty indiscriminately. There were herbs for easing childbirth. There were weeds. Lambert sifted through the plants with his hand, pulled out a small white bud, stunted from the rising cold.

“S’good,” Lambert said, “Fine. More of these.”

Geralt leaned in over the basket, ear to ear with Lambert. He smelled like sweat.

“Verbena.” There was honey on his breath, bitter ale.

“Mm.”

Geralt’s yellow eyes flicked to Lambert’s own, and he straightened, nodding. His white eyelashes caught in the sun. Made the hard angles of his face look funny. In the corners of his eyes, he had fine crows feet. Lambert almost didn’t see them.

Looking at another witcher’s eyes made him feel—

“Thankless,” Geralt smiled, taking the bloom from Lambert’s fingers.

*

What does a bard do when he’s not singing about witchers?

Jaskier had scrubbed the flagstones until his back ached. He beat the dirt out of woven rugs older than his House. He dusted cobwebs. He went to the stables to shoo one bothersome owl away from Vesemir’s horse. No task was too small. All was possible, with the help of the continent’s greatest poet.

“It’s been a long time since Vesemir’s had someone to boss around,” Geralt had smiled.

“No _wonder_ ,” Jaskier spat, plucking a chicken savagely.

Geralt must have said something, that night. Vesemir had made such a _fuss_ over the chicken (“—expertly done! The smoothest I’ve had in a long while, and, considering my years—”). Jaskier couldn’t stay cross at the man. He was too exhausted to stay cross at the man.

After that night, Vesemir had given him a reduced workload, responsibilities limited to the baking, and the cleaning of chamberpots. In the subsequent outcry (“He can’t do _both_ ,” Lambert had hissed) this was amended to baking duties and general housekeeping.

The only thing he could rely on with any certainty was Geralt, pulling him off the gallows.

It was strange to see him so _settled_. Had he known, when he let him come to Kaer Morhen, how much he was letting Jaskier see?

He’d never seen Geralt walk to breakfast barefoot, swordless, sleep in his eyes. Geralt breezing through the threshold, lilacs in the crook of his arm.

Geralt, for his part, trusted him. Jaskier didn’t know if that makes it better or worse.

Jaskier wanted to hoard these stolen moments like a harpy on the mount. He wanted to tell everyone. He wanted to cover Geralt’s nakedness and never speak of this again.

Today, Jaskier rose with the lark and did not think about trouble. He baked the bread for their table. He tossed a roll casually to Geralt, watched him eat, and Lambert did too.

*

There were brothers who taught him, when the castle was full, but now he made it himself.

The alembic distiller was old as shit, and elven, and huge. It was red copper, near as tall as Lambert himself, with a round, cauldron bottom, and a smaller, tapered bulb as large as a melon at its head.

It looked like the blistered metal cock of a giant. It was his favorite room in Kaer Morhen. The apparatus made navigating the space an utter nightmare, its pipe spanning the room in coils and angles to meet a copper barrel you could fit a man in.

At the other end of the room, water boiled over. Lambert took a seat, set himself to peeling potatoes.

He liked the process. He was a fair hand at alchemy, this was similar. He did not need _soothing_. But the process was… pleasant.

Jaskier walked through the door, stumbling back a step at the sight of the alembic.

*

Lambert was alone with the biggest metal cock Jaskier had ever seen. Lambert huffed, resolutely working his knife along the potato.

“If you’ve come to drown your fucking sorrows, you’re too early.”

The room was ungodly hot. Lambert’s face broke with sweat that shone on his lids, on his cheeks in a hard glow. He was bundled in leathers. _More so than usual?_ Jaskier wasn’t sure _. He couldn’t be._

Broad, muscular frame bent in the small chair, he moved the paring knife in minute twitches. The rambling pipes of the copper still cast its afternoon shadows over him like a net.

“I’ve come to help.”

“Nope.”

Jaskier pulled out the chair opposite Lambert, making the legs screech, and sat.

“It might surprise you to know, that having spent some time _myself_ in a monastery, I was able to—”

“It does surprise me that you spent time—”

“Wh—”

“—that you were allowed in a monastery.”

“You wound me, don’t interrupt, I was so _honored_ as to watch the brothers at their toil, and in the process picked up a _thing or two_ about the distillation of spirits.”

Lambert hunched deeper over his task with every word, irises slits, a picture of deliberate, desperate, slipping focus.

“—And I would be honored _again_ to learn from _you_ , sharing what trifles I know in the bargain, reciprocity being the coin of the realm, coin of the realm making the spheres go round—”

Jaskier had really missed this.

Lambert looked up, glaring at him from across the table. It startled Jaskier to see such animosity in eyes so like Geralt’s.

He plucked a potato out of Lambert’s pile, smiled sweetly.

“Why.” Lambert bit out, eyes hard.

Jaskier knew better than to say, _I wondered what Geralt sees in you._

Jaskier lifted his brows, said primly, “I would like to get to know you.”

Lambert’s eyes searched Jaskier, squinched with suspicion. He had a terribly _active_ face. Eyes just the same as Geralt’s, but when he looked closer, there was something more _orangey_ about—

Lambert straightened, face tense, holding himself with an intentional rigidity that reminded Jaskier of a mummer, or a man walking to the gallows. Jaskier had not walked to the gallows like that, he was rather _pulled_ , but if he were a mummer walking to the gallows— Lambert exhaled through his nose, shoulder cocking insouciantly.

“I’m an open book.”

*

He didn’t smell like stolen rotgut, but he smelled like Geralt, and that’s worse.

Jaskier wouldn’t leave, and he mashed the potatoes and berries haltingly, like a novice, and he gave Lambert no moment’s peace. He asked Lambert about past jobs. Lambert told him a story about a wyvern’s nest that could gag a surgeon, and Jaskier asked if the _moon_ had been out.

Jaskier’s sleeves rolled to the bicep, Lambert could see a cluster of long-faded flea bites, just in the crook of his arm beneath the vibrant fabric.

Jaskier caught his stare, tipped his chin up with some dignity.

“Mash looks done,” Lambert said, grabbing the bucket abruptly out of Jaskier’s hands. The mash didn’t look done. Several of the boiled roots lay sluggishly on the surface, whole.

“It doesn’t look done,” Jaskier wrinkled his nose. His hair had begun to curl in the steam.

Lambert walked the bucket over to a row of ceramic aging casks, putting the immense copper still blessedly in between him and the bard.

“S’fine. I don’t tell you when your little ballads are done,” he called over his shoulder.

“You’re saying they need some work,” he heard Jaskier mutter under his breath.

He popped the lid off an empty aging cask, scent of centuries’ fermentation blinding him. He waved a hand in the air, _so-so_ , then realized Jaskier couldn’t see him.

“I’m saying they need some work,” he called.

“You couldn’t write a song,” he heard Jaskier’s chair scrape. His voice echoed, like he spoke to the high ceiling, “You couldn’t write a song if I gave you six quills, and all winter.”

“I could write a song,” Lambert poured the mash into the cask, splattering, churning up more dank air, “It’ll be called _The Bard Who Wandered Up the Mountain and Was Never Seen Again_. I’ll play it on the high harp and rend my gown.”

“Before or after you play?”

“Mid. In the middle.”

“Nice touch,” he heard the dull slap of a potato being thrown, and caught, “Middle of the gown?”

“I was thinking middle of the gown, yeah. Give the mourners a show.”

Jaskier snorted, quieter than a moth’s wings.

“I would be loath to miss it,” he hummed, “You must look a sight in a rent gown.”

“I’ll walk _real slow_ past your unmarked grave. Maybe I’ll bare an ankle.”

A real laugh, floated out from the nest of coils. He sounded closer.

“Unmarked? Not afraid I’ll come back to haun—” Jaskier cut himself off with a gag as he came in range of the aging casks, “ _Shrine of Melitele._ ”

Lambert gave the cask a hearty slap. The new mash steamed up from the mouth of the pot. The other casks had been filled weeks ago, and while sealed, gave off a distinctly corpselike smell. Lambert grinned, breathed in deeply, willing his stomach not to flip. Jaskier looked at him like he was going to _retch_.

“Oh my god,” he said, soft features screwing into repulsion. His eyes watered. It was the ugliest face he’d ever seen the bard make.

“Come back tomorrow,” Lambert leered.

Hands clapped over his nose and mouth, Jaskier’s watery green eyes held his. He nodded once, manfully.

*

Vesemir brought him spearmint after dinner, wrapped in brown paper, tied in string. He gruffly warned him about the dangers of overindulgence, prodding him in the chest _hard_ , but not cruelly.

Over his shoulder, Lambert sipped his mead precisely, eyes in full gloat.

*

He drank the tea. Lambert could have laughed. He sat on an unopened crate, feet crossed at the ankle.

“Wonders for the throat,” he said.

*

Jaskier folded herbs and petals in thin white cloth, tied it round his face when it came time to make spirits from rotten garbage.

Lambert’s nose twitched at Jaskier’s arrival. He shook his head amid the open, reeking casks.

“Well, come on,” he said, and Jaskier walked into the thick of it.

The mash-and-water had been in the casks for weeks, murky yellow liquid rising above the sediment. They ladled the liquid through cheesecloth, working bent at the waist, face to face. The smell wasn’t so bad under the wrap, but Jaskier could feel sweat dampening the cloth, sticking to his skin. Lambert’s own eyelashes looked wet.

“Our friend Zoltan,” Jaskier began, “Our dear friend Zoltan, makes an ale. Whole inn smells like apples for weeks, exceedingly lovely.” Jaskier poured more mash through the cloth, a small insect riddled up for air.

“This isn’t some innkeep’s ale, bard,” Lambert said, “This is real shit. _Witcher_ shit.”

 _Witcher shit_ , Jaskier mouthed under his mask. Lambert squinted.

“This’ll knock you on your pretty ass faster than you can spit.”

“You’ve never seen me spit,” Jaskier said lightly.

Lambert poured mashwater on his own shoes. He stomped his boots, cursing. His ears pinked.

“Small frame, lithe,” Lambert said, meeting Jaskier’s eyes with some discernable effort, “You’d get a yard, at most.”

“ _Lithe_?” Jaskier crowed.

“Like an ailing child. Veal. Wasting away,” Lambert said, eyes glittering, “— _from a life of indulgence_. You’d give the sisters at the hospital _fits_.”

“I have been looked over _thoroughly_ by the ward sisters of the Vilmerius Hospital—”

“Man, have some respect—”

“—and have been declared the pinnacle of the male form, in absolutely every way—”

Lambert barked a laugh.

“— _not least of which_ in diaphragm strength. I could spit the wings off a fly.”

“You couldn’t spit the legs off a snake.”

“I’d never,” Jaskier said, “Some snakes spit back.”

Lambert groaned, dripping leather gloves making an aborted move to his temples. His ears still burned.

Jaskier’s chest felt unaccountably tight.

“Well, my ‘pretty ass’ notwithstanding— _ugh,_ ” Jaskier said, as Lambert poured the contents of his left boot on the floor, “I do have some experience in the matter as a connoisseur—”

“As a _lush_ —”

“—Who has _much to offer_ in the way of his cultured palate to those otherwise deprived by circumstance.”

“Are you calling me provincial?” Lambert asked, emptying his right boot.

“Yes,” Jaskier said.

*

Geralt looked at him, in the glass gardens. Leveled him a neutral, assessing stare amid the bean shoots. The scrutiny made his mouth dry. Something unnamable coiled in his gut.

“ _What_ ,” he snapped.

He could see his nose flare, as he smelled him.

*

The witchers are about the same height. It felt strange to notice it now. Their carriage all differed, but he found himself at about chin-height with Lambert, same as with Geralt, if he stood that close, which now, he did.

There was a scar on his chin that cleaved the dark stubble.

*

The bard oversaw the distilling like Lambert was gonna piss in it once he turned his back. He was everywhere, in everything, all of the time. Lambert crossed to the other side of the copper still, just for _room_.

He pursued.

They’d gone through and strained the first batch twice before loading it into the still. Steam rose from the spouts, and the cracks in the pipes, and hung in the air insolubly.

Jaskier, like all noblemen, was _grasping._

“Is there not an _additive_ that might make the spirit more,” he waved his hands, “tolerable?”

“We are drinking to _get drunk_. Or in your case, to get obliterated, and completely embarrass yourself,” Lambert said, fixing a glass jar under the spout. The first drops of the new spirit plunked to the bottom, utterly poisonous.

Jaskier did the little shrug he does. The ambivalent little shrug.

“ _So_ ,” Lambert said, “it doesn’t have to be nice! I’m not trying to fuck a baroness on a bed of velvet, aromatics don’t enter into it.”

Jaskier gave him a look that was downright patronizing.

“ _Doesn’t have to be nice,_ ” Jaskier repeated, shaking his head, “I won’t act surprised that you know what an aromatic is.”

Lambert scoffed, "I’ve been drinking myself into oblivion longer than you’ve been alive—”

“Surely longer than that,” Jaskier smiled, with teeth. He had a lot of them.

“Longer than you’ve been prancing the realm in those candy-ass purple breeches.”

He quashed a small flicker of trepidation.

Jaskier’s mouth was terribly red when he smirked.

“My _breeches_?” Jaskier said, almost laughing. He had far, far too many teeth. Trophies of a soft life.

Was Jaskier looking at _his_ teeth? Lambert fought the impulse to close his mouth.

“I’ve been _prancing the realm_ in these breeches only three seasons yet, so you may be in more dire need of help than I realized.”

Jaskier turned his leg showily, some bawd’s joke, and the reply died on Lambert’s tongue. His calves were hard, ankles neat. He didn’t wear culottes, Lambert could see the dark hair glint beneath the hem.

Geralt makes him walk, he remembered.

“Empresses have been buried in trousers more masculine than those,” he managed.

“Were they _leather?”_ Jaskier said dryly, “Do you think if you wore woolens, maybe a _color_ , your cock would fall clean off?”

Lambert didn’t jump when Jaskier said ‘ _cock’_.

“Cock and balls both, like rats off a burning ship.”

Lambert was sweating. When the still was running, it made the room unbearable. The still was running.

“I think you’d like them,” Jaskier said, propping himself on the table.

“ _I don’t like them_.”

“You witchers are all piss-scared of _nice things_ ,” Jaskier said, “Look—”

Jaskier grabbed his wrist, pulled his glove off in one rough yank. The air shocked his fingers. Lambert had never felt so scandalized in his life, and then Jaskier placed his bare hand on his clothed knee.

It was soft. The wool was warm, felt smooth as water under his fingers. He realized, with some bitterness, that this was the softest thing he’d ever felt. He moved his thumb, feeling the fabric catch against callus. His skin was warm, under. Jaskier’s knee felt hard, knobby, but his thigh—Lambert’s hand froze.

Jaskier’s fingertips rested on the back of his hand, light as snowfall, _letting_ him—

Lambert needed to move his hand.

And then he did.

Jaskier’s eyes were soft, hesitant. He eased off the table, stepped forward slowly, like he was coming up on a baby deer. Was he the baby deer? Lambert felt another wave of sweat prick him. He reeled back, staggering.

“Though if my breeches offend you, I can—”

_Oh._

Jaskier’s gaze felt like an immovable thing.

“Hah!” his voice sounded rough to his ears, “You scald your little cock off on my watch, and I’ll have to answer to the Butcher of Blaviken.”

Sweat shone on Jaskier’s lip. He moved closer, dappled in the uneven shadows of the sprawling pipes. One eye flashed in the light.

“It just rends the spirit to see two brothers at war.”

“Will you write a little song for me?” Lambert tried to force airiness into his tone. Was he shouting? _Shit._ “A ballad for my tragic end?”

Jaskier wobbled his head, considering. The heat brought a flush to his cheeks. He really did look like some fucking painting, hanging in a place Lambert had no business being in.

Is that what Geralt likes about him?

“ _The Senseless and Preventable Death of an Amateur Swillmonger.”_

“Hm.”

 _“Tears!”_ he flourished a hand, _“for an Aged Lout”_

“Tears would be nice,” Lambert said.

“Mm,” he assented. Jaskier stooped over, stirred the mash at his feet. Looking down, he added, almost negligently, “Between my little cock and your tragic end, I’d have all the maidens weeping from White Orchard to Beauclair.”

He flicked his eyes up to Lambert, and Lambert had to sit down.

*

All fun and games, until he saw Lambert’s slit pupils blow dark, and a bolt of lust had struck him like divine punishment. Felt easy to dance around it, this _thing_ with his witchers, but Jaskier’s a fool, with a fool’s reckoning, and he did not reckon that Lambert would look at him _like that._

Jaskier knelt on the cracked stone floor, and heard the breath leave Lambert in a wheeze.

The spirit hit the glass in steady drips.

Lambert’s eyes bore into him with undisguised hunger, and something manic. He chewed his lip. Back straight where he sat against the wall, his hands bat the fastenings of his leathers, half-gloved and fumbling. It made the garments seem ill-fitting to Jaskier, in ways they hadn’t before. He could see the tense of his biceps in his sleeves, stretching the leather. This realization felt urgent.

“S’too hot,” Lambert panted, “Right?”

His eyes were black, heavy brows casting them in shadow. A flicker of uncertainty, his hands stilled.

“You’re right,” Jaskier said, nodding, “You’re right.”

Lambert nodded vigorously in answer, chest heaving. One arm resting on his bent knee, he looked nearly casual. His bare hand rest on his thigh, fingers twitching. He exhaled once through his nose, slowly.

“Well,” he said hoarsely, thighs widening a fraction, “C’mere.”

Jaskier crawled, closed the distance. Lambert tipped his head up, cracked lip reddening where he worried it. His gloved hand grabbed Jaskier’s wrist like a vise.

“So, you’re a…” Lambert trailed off, eyes scanning Jaskier’s face like he’d never seen it before, before coming to rest on his groin.

His grip bruised. Jaskier felt it jolt straight to his cock.

“Could you smell it on me, witcher?” Jaskier said, grinning.

“Don’t be fucking stupid,” Lambert whispered, barely audible. His lashes fluttered.

Jaskier moved slow as honey.

He flicked his tongue against Lambert’s lips, swallowed his gasp.

Lambert lurched forward, teeth clacking Jaskier’s. He kissed like only the very desperate can. He projected personality, Jaskier thought distantly. Lambert’s stubble stung him pleasantly.

How long had it been?

Jaskier moaned into his mouth, felt Lambert shiver under his hand. His coat burned. Lambert radiated heat like the feversick, it hit Jaskier like a physical blow.

His right hand was pins and needles in Lambert’s grip. Jaskier flopped his hand weakly.

“Let me,” he huffed against his mouth. Lambert stared blankly, then realized with a start, releasing Jaskier’s hand.

He picked apart the laces of Lambert’s pants nimbly. Lambert was harder than he was, painfully visible even through the thick material.

Jaskier heard himself pant, quite loudly.

He caught Lambert’s eye. This close, they really were more orange than yellow. Shape’s the same.

“Your tavern girls in Velen,” Lambert said, breathing fast, “You make ‘em beg like this?”

He squeezed Lambert hard though his britches, held there. Lambert choked, hands in fists on the stone floor.

“You make _him_ beg like this?”

Jaskier’s balls twitched up sharply, he swore.

“Stand up,” he rasped, “Bastard, stand up.”

Lambert scrambled to his feet, leaned against the wall with a thud as Jaskier yanked his trousers down. He was thick, dripping already, flushed against the dark thatch of hair. He smelled like sweat. Jaskier’s heart ached like he had seen the sunset.

He licked a long stripe on the underside of his cock, and Lambert inhaled, shaky as a sob.

Jaskier breathed through his nose, swallowed him whole. Lambert curled in like a lily, cursing into the top of Jaskier’s head. His breath was warm against his scalp.

His hands gripped Jaskier’s shoulders like they were the only thing holding him upright, and when Jaskier pulled back, sucked the head with a hard _pop_ , Lambert’s knees wobbled.

Jaskier was hard as iron, the fabric of his breeches blindingly tight. He ground the heel of his hand against himself, humming around Lambert.

A surprised moan punched out of him, sent heat pooling low in Jaskier’s stomach. A bead of sweat rolled down Lambert’s neck.

“Is this—” Lambert’s voice was thin, breathy. His fingers dug into Jaskier’s shoulders like points of dark, absolute gravity.

Jaskier bobbed, canting his eyes up to meet Lambert’s. Lambert swayed. Jaskier winked.

“Is this— what you do to him?”

Jaskier grunted, shuddering despite himself. He could feel his cock leaking, dragging between his thigh and the soft wool. He was far closer than he was proud of.

The hunger was still there in Lambert’s face, burning like a torch, but there was something incredulous in his look. He watched Jaskier suck him off like it was _unbelievable._

He felt unbearably hard on his tongue, tasted bitterly close. Jaskier gripped his hips firmly, holding him in place. Above, Lambert sighed an unbroken stream of profanity, hips bucking. His hands trembled on Jaskier’s shoulders.

Jaskier grasped him, stroking roughly, lathing the head with his tongue. He grabbed his bollocks with the other hand, squeezed as he took him deep again.

Lambert batted him urgently with one hand. The casual comradeliness of the gesture took Jaskier aback a moment with delight.

“I’m gonna—” Lambert said, voice rough. He blushed in truth now, red splotches blooming on his face and neck. Jaskier’s stomach flipped, and he knew with some horrible certainty that _Lambert, blushing_ would dog his furtive moments until he died.

Jaskier swallowed him to the root, gagged when Lambert hit his throat. He let his hands slip, thumbs rubbing circles into Lambert’s thighs. Lambert’s hips jerked without his leave, fucking Jaskier’s mouth arrhythmically.

Jaskier let him, humming, humming.

Lambert gasped, as if struck, spending hot in Jaskier’s mouth. He clapped a hand over his mouth, dark brows furrowed, yellow eyes screwed shut. Jaskier swallowed around him, greedily, and he _shivered_.

Sighing, he shakily cupped Jaskier’s jaw, pulling him off.

Jaskier stood unsteadily, knees cracking. Lambert snorted. Jaskier leaned in, hands fisting in Lambert’s half-done leathers, pressing his hardness against Lambert’s hip, ever the optimist.

Lambert swallowed thickly, eyes glittering. He tentatively moved against Jaskier, watching his face carefully.

Jaskier nodded, encouragingly, deliriously.

Lambert placed his hands lightly on Jaskier’s hips, slotting his thigh up into his groin. Jaskier keened, nails dug into the witcher’s bicep.

“Please,” he said, voice hoarse. Lambert groaned softly to hear it.

He flipped them, Jaskier’s back pinned to the wall, knocking the wind out of him. Lambert rolled his hips into Jaskier’s, grinding hard and slow, panting in his ear.

Jaskier laughed, taut as a bowstring, too, too close. He felt it build in him like a disaster. He felt surrounded, hemmed in.

Jaskier moved his hands from Lambert’s arms, grabbing his ass roughly, bringing him closer.

Lambert started, then huffed out a laugh, digging his hands into Jaskier’s hips.

Jaskier felt Lambert’s breath, damp on the shell of his ear, beard rubbing away at his cheek.

“C’mere, c’mere,” Lambert murmured.

Jaskier’s orgasm tore through him like a shot, spilling hot between their bodies, blinding him. It left his ears ringing. If Lambert hadn’t pinned him to the wall, Jaskier is certain he would’ve disassembled into motes, into _thoughts_.

He became aware, dimly, that Lambert was still supporting his weight against the wall, hands under the backs of his thighs. Jaskier looked up, found him staring.

Lambert’s eyes were wide, blinking. He didn’t make a move, left them joined. Jaskier could feel his heart pound through his jacket, feel him start to stiffen against his hip.

Jaskier gave him an unsteady grin, winked.

Lambert blushed red to the hairline, clapped him twice on the arm, turning.

*

The bard went to the kitchen, walking awkwardly, as if saddlesore in his ruined pants, and Lambert followed him like a dog.

Jaskier was whistling. Lambert’s mind was as blank as snow, empty as the grave, and he realized that he was starving, and that he liked Jaskier’s whistling.

Jaskier drifted around the kitchen with a hard round of black bread from yesterday’s breakfast, popping pieces in his mouth as he opened all the cabinets in the room.

Lambert cracked six eggs in the cast iron pan, stared a moment, then cracked a seventh. He belatedly sparked the stove with an igni, stomach growling.

Jaskier returned, aimlessly as he left, with a carafe of water, set it down neutrally on the kitchen table. He joined him in watching the eggs fry.

This was new to him, Lambert admitted privately. He took a wood spoon, scrambling.

“I haven’t… with Geralt,” Jaskier said, muffled around a mouthful of bread. He chewed, meeting Lambert’s eyes blearily. His smile was small, tired.

He felt the dim memory of what he had said to Jaskier bloom in his mind, like an explosion on the far edge of town.

“If you breathe a word—” Lambert ground out, “If you tell him, I’ll—”

“—Come down my throat?” Jaskier’s eyes were flat as orens.

Lambert flinched.

But Jaskier was smiling, wryly now, the scent of seed heavy in the air. When Jaskier snatched the spoon from his limp hand, flipping the eggs, Lambert felt like a conspirator.

*

“What’s up,” is what he said, standing in Jaskier’s doorway in the middle of the night.

Jaskier blinked the sleep out of his eyes.

Lambert held a small flame pinched in three fingers, lighting him harshly from below like a mummer’s ghost. He looked disheveled, like he’d been up all night. He ran a hand through his stubble restlessly.

“Nothing,” Jaskier yawned.

Every lover has their quirks.

Lambert squinted, scanning his face for mockery. Something wavered and gave. Lambert took one step forward, foot in between Jaskier’s, eyes watchful. His breath smelled like mint leaves.

Jaskier blocked the doorway, savoring the flicker of frustration on his face, the bulk of him bearing down.

“Are you asking to come in?” Jaskier asked.

Lambert went rigid, like a glancing breath would shatter him.

Nodded once, and Jaskier let him through with the grace of a diplomat.

*

Jaskier had traced his fingers along the scars on his cheek, even gentle through the lashes,

called him “louche”,

which made him feel provincial, and _hard_ , and very, very still.

*

A still that size can run all night, churning poison.

(“Don’t I know it,” Jaskier groused.

“No, _poison_ -poison,” Lambert said, pouring the first casks into the snowmelt in a clear, shivery arc, “This shit will literally kill you. Cover your mouth.”)

It had seemed unbearably decadent. He liked to think that Lambert was becoming unbearably decadent.

When it ran out of poison it gave them something else, and they sealed the bottles with old cork.

Lambert brought by three glass bottles, palm-sized, just for him, asked him to try singing in tune for once.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!!! this is the first thing i've written in ~13 years?? so if you made it here you are braver than a marine :)
> 
> dedicated to the guys who make videos showing you how to distill vodka at in your kitchen. this one's for you


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